Just Another Cork Tree
by Lagomorphic Cacti
Summary: It's another crash. Just another car crash. And the night had been going so well, too...


It had been Joe who suggested going to a bar, claiming that he wanted to celebrate their "second-to-last stop on the tour stretch" properly. Pete had agreed, wanting to get at least one night out on the town before they had to pack up back onto the bus to head out tomorrow. Patrick agreed to be dragged along, as long as they tried to keep a low profile at a less-crowded place. And Andy figured that he might as well tag along and at least enjoy observing the others getting absolutely _obliterated_.

"One drink?" Pete asked, exasperated, looking up from his phone.

"Yes, 'one drink'," Patrick confirmed from next to Pete, looking to the heavens. "I'm not gonna make Andy wrangle me back onto the bus again, especially since he'll _definitely_ already have you two in tow."

"I seriously don't mind!" Andy said, the smile evident in his voice. He tapped along on the steering wheel in rhythm with the song playing low on the radio, ducking occasionally to fully see and judge the various bars that they passed.

"He totally minds," said Joe, smiling.

"No he _doesn't_ , come on," Pete leaned forward, resting his arm on the back of Andy's seat. "Hey, look. Last show tomorrow. Doors don't open till, what, five? Five-thirty? That gives us more than enough time to sleep off whatever we might happen to give ourselves tonight, right?"

Patrick rolled his eyes. "I'd rather not give myself _anything_."

"Since when?" Pete smiled.

Joe looked over his shoulder at Patrick. "That's your story now. In fifteen minutes, none of us'll be able to _stop_ you from getting real fuckin' smashed."

Patrick's phone screen lit up, illuminating his face. "Oh, is that a guarantee?"

"Guaranteed." Joe smirked and turned back around.

"Okay," Andy said. "So we all agree: Patrick is going to be _obliterated_ by night's end. Agreed?"

Two resounding swears of "Agreed" rang out in the car. Patrick leaned against the car window, mock-groaning and trying to hide his restrained smile.

"Great," Andy continued, grinning. "So. Now let's agree on a final destination. Cause we're gonna be halfway across Miami soon."

As Joe turned up the volume on Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and sang along in a high falsetto, Patrick leaned forward to Andy and said "Marcus just texted me back, he says we should try 'The Stage'." He rattled off the address from the accompanying text.

"Awesome. That… might have been a block or two back."

* * *

Patrick did not get absolutely smashed. In fact, to the utmost surprise of all four musicians, all of them remained mostly sober throughout the evening.

Upon entering 'The Stage', they had been initially put off by the pulsing beats of strobing neon lights illuminating a sizeable dancefloor. But upon further inspection, the place seemed to be divided into two sections; one half where an electricity seemed to linger in the air, where many groups of younger patrons were half-heartedly dancing and bumping into one another, chatting and singing over the loud EDM that was playing. The other half was the area that housed the bar, with booths and softer warm lighting.

The latter area was the one that the four immediately decided on, not that Joe wouldn't occasionally throw glances over at the dancefloor, surveying the crowd.

The night went at a pleasantly slow rate, with a general air of relaxation surrounding their discreet booth as the four gradually warmed up to their surroundings, taking full advantage of the normalcy engrained in such a casual outing. Joe and Pete drank enough to give themselves a buzz at first, but eventually came to a mutual unspoken agreement that they wouldn't go far enough to make themselves a nuisance- or sick. Patrick followed suite in this agreement, and Andy was happy either way. Although, he claimed, "Oh damn, I was really looking forward to the drunk confessions of love come five a.m."

All in all, they left 'The Stage' around two o'clock, feeling good, having worn their conversation topics thin and having kept Patrick away from the late-night karaoke stage for as long as humanly possible.

"Shush, shush, I'm sure you would have been great," Joe said jokingly, pushing Patrick ahead of him and ducking into the rental car.

"Oh, shut up," Patrick replied, shoving back a bit as he settled into the seat and leaned against the window.

"You really wanted to follow that Dave Matthews Band guy?" Pete chimed in from the front.

"It would have been fine! What, I wouldn't go all out."

"What happened to vocal rest?" asked Andy, looking over his shoulder.

"It would have been fine, c'mon." Patrick smiled despite his protests, putting his arm over the seat and around Joe's shoulders, looking down at his phone before remembering that it was dead.

"Right, right," Joe and Andy shared a look.

"You still good to drive, Hurley?" Pete asked.

"No, actually. I chugged tequila in the bathroom."

"No, I mean," Pete pressed on with a smile, "You tired, or…?"

"Not at all. And you guys sure as hell can't drive, so," Andy laughed slightly, turning around to reverse out of their parking spot and onto the busy street.

"I could," muttered Patrick.

"Well _I_ can't," Joe shot back, "and neither can you."

"So," Pete interrupted, clapping his hands together. "Anyone up for a movie when we get back? Night's still pretty young."

They glanced at one other skeptically, but upon realizing that Pete was serious they began shrugging and nodding.

As Andy eventually got them onto a relatively empty stretch of highway, Pete was still vehemently arguing against "The Fellowship of the Ring".

"Come on," said Patrick.

"What?"

"Why would we skip the first one?"

"We always see the first one! An- and we always get, like, halfway through, stop the movie, and then pick up next time with the same movie again! Let's just get to "The Two Towers" already!"

"I mean, okay, you have a point," said Joe, leaning forward to point at Pete. "But you _can't skip_ 'Fellowship', man! That's like…"

"The eighth deadly sin," interjected Andy, eyes on the road.

"That's the eighth deadly sin." Joe confirmed.

"Okay, then, I don't know, can we actually finish it this time?" Pete laughed.

Joe smiled. "Or, I don't know, can we watch the normal one and not the six hour extended one?"

"Shit!" said Andy.

"I mean, I'd be totally dow-"

Patrick's voice was caught in his throat as they all felt the rental car swerve slightly. A cold, blinding light filled the car for a moment, illuminating the sharp silhouettes of all four of them, before a violent mixture of noise and bone-breaking force surrounded them, lifting the world momentarily into the air.

Involuntarily struggling against a force that he could not see nor understand, Patrick found himself moving with whatever had moved their car, his hand scrabbling for purchase where it had been gripping the seat moments before. He hung on, riding out whatever was happening to them. His head bashed against something as the car swerved again, this time in a downwards motion. He heard mechanical grinding noises, then nothing, then multiple voices crying out at once. He wasn't sure if his own voice was mixed in with the others.

His neck snapped forward with another jolt as they collided again. Then, they were motionless.

Patrick was aware of himself. He was aware of the events that had just occurred around him. But his nerve endings didn't seem to be. His head hung for a moment, loose, exhausted from the force that had just rocked it. He became aware of his heartbeat thudding in his ears, pounding and creeping its way to where his head had been impacted, bringing a wave of crackling pain to the spot.

He leaned his head back, eyes watering. "Fuck," he muttered.

Upon cracking open his eyes, a rush of blood came to his head and colors flooded his vision for a second. Once it passed, he squinted into the dim light flooding in from an unknown source.

A distant part of his brain registered that he was looking at the unmoving form of Joe, his friend. His bandmate. But it took him more than a moment to actually _see_ him. To see Pete in the front passenger seat, chest heaving and hair hanging in front of his face as he leaned forward, his seatbelt holding him stiffly in place. The air was still, but Patrick's heart began to race, stuttering as it saw the gigantic dent that traveled from his own car door to the front driver's door, meeting with the form of Andy that he could barely make out.

"- okay?"

Patrick was vaguely aware that he was missing his glasses.

"- 'Trick!"

Someone was yelling at him. He met Pete's eyes and saw his mouth moving.

"Patrick, are you okay?"

Patrick registered the question. He didn't think he was okay, but he nodded, heart still hammering and eyes wet.

"Are you _okay_?" Pete all but shouted.

Patrick nodded again, harder this time.

"Joe, you okay?"

Unbuckling his own seatbelt, Patrick moved automatically. He leaned over to Joe, put a hand on his chest, and shook slightly, hands shaking as they gripped the warm material of Joe's jacket.

"Joe, c'mon, Joe? _Joe_!" Pete unbuckled his own seatbelt, head leaning back against the headrest momentarily.

Joe groaned and opened his eyes slowly before closing them again and leaning forward, hands jumping to his knee as he grunted out "Oh, fuck…"

"Are you okay?" Patrick asked, voice shaking.

It took a minute for Joe to answer as he breathed heavily, letting the air in and out through gritted teeth.

"My leg's fucked up," he said. "My leg's fucked up. My knee."

"Holy shit," Patrick heard Pete say. Patrick looked to Joe's knee, then to Pete. Then he craned his neck to look at where Pete was looking at Andy.

Patrick's heart stuttered and his stomach turned as he stared at Andy. Without his glasses he couldn't see everything, but he didn't want to. He could tell that there was blood dripping from the drummer's mouth and covering the right side of his head, and that his torso hung limp in his seat, suspended by a seatbelt and the sizeable dent in the car. His head rested on the steering wheel.

The three of them stared at their friend for a moment. Long enough to see that he wasn't moving at all.

"Andy?" Joe called out, leaning forward before grunting in pain again.

Pete leaned over the console to unbuckle Andy's seatbelt, putting his hands firmly on Andy's chest to stop him from falling.

"Patrick, go around. Try the door!"

"Andy!" Joe shouted, harsher this time.

Patrick nodded. "'Kay. Okay." His door opened on the second try after he shakily put his foot on the bottom and kicked. He slid out of the car, barely noticing when his sneakers slipped on the slight incline and he tripped. Gripping the car door, he hurried to right himself and grab onto the driver's door handle, which was bent inward about a foot with the rest of the door. He pulled again and again, hands grappling at the slick metal, putting his back into it as he looked up though the broken glass of Andy's window.

Andy's torso and head were hanging, limp, his jaw slack. There were numerous cuts on his head and cheek, as well as several that got lost in the inked lines on his neck, all leading to a sizeable gash across his jawline. Blood streamed from it in a steady, pulsing flow. Pete was holding Andy up, clearly struggling to grip him. Pete was breathing heavily. He looked terrified.

Patrick tried the door again, ignoring the way that his feet slid with the effort.

"It-it's no good. It's too broken."

"What?" Pete stilled and peered around Andy.

"It's- it's all bent!" Patrick shouted, voice wavering. He was dimly aware of someone's blood on his hands. He continued to pull, eventually pausing only briefly to wipe his hands on his jeans.

"Okay, okay, um," Pete's voice sounded strained. "Patrick- come around, help me get him out."

"Should we…" Joe's distant voice was interrupted by a pained grunt. "Should we really move him?"

"We're not just gonna fuckin' leave him!"

As Patrick carefully moved around the front of the car, he surveyed the scene in the dim light of a nearby streetlamp. His eyes traveled from the massive, grotesque dent that had been put into their rental car to the looming tree trunk that was now jutting into the hood. There was glass littering the muddy incline that the car sat on. Patrick ignored the sight as well as he could, else he knew that he wouldn't be able to tear his mind away from the fact that _that_ was their car. They had been in that car. Andy and Joe and Pete were still in that car.

Maneuvering around the tree and to the other side, Patrick helped Pete move Andy out of the cramped misshapen driver's seat and onto the passenger side. Pete wriggled out from under him, freeing himself from the car completely, and suddenly collapsed from the strain, sliding down the side of rental.

Reaching forward, Patrick was unable to will his hands to be still, and he hated himself for it. They shook, energy still sweeping through, keeping him on his feet while simultaneously draining him. He wiped his face before feeling blindly around Andy's neckline, doing his best to ignore the new blood coating his hands as he did so. This is what you did, right? This was how you found a pulse? When you weren't sure if someone was still alive or not?

He grabbed the side of the car, feeling himself slip again. His shaking made him unable to keep still enough to search his friend's neck, to try and find a vein or artery or whatever it was that would tell him if Andy was still fucking breathing.

"Is he breathing?"

"… I don't…"

"Patrick, is he breathing?" Joe repeated from the back seat.

"I can't- I, I can't tell, fuck!" Patrick shouted, the panic rising in his voice, his eyes watering again in frustration as a new wave of pain rushed to his head.

Eyes refusing to meet Andy's face, Patrick let his hand hover above his friend's slack mouth.

He really hoped that that wasn't the wind blowing against his palm.

"He's breathing," he said loudly, "Bu-but barely I think? He's alive, he's alive Joe."

Joe let out an audible sigh, which mingled with a quiet sob. Patrick didn't blame him; he was sure that the only reason he himself wasn't breaking down was because he could barely string two thoughts together. He knew that he definitely wasn't processing whatever was happening to them properly. And frankly, he was pretty glad of that.

"You're bleeding."

Pete's eyes were glazed and empty as he looked up at and spoke to Patrick, head hitting the car dully again as he slumped further onto the ground. The words _shock_ and _concussion_ briefly crossed Patrick's mind, but he couldn't dwell on that right now, despite the fact that he really, really wanted to.

"Pete, c'mon, you gotta help me. C'mon." Patrick tried to help his friend up. "Joe, can you call 911? I- I think- I'm pretty sure we're alone." The lack of other people or lights or voices coming from the road told Patrick all he needed to know; whoever had been driving the other car was either in the same boat as them, or had left.

Patrick glanced over his friends- Joe grimacing and gingerly getting his phone out of his pocket with a bruise quickly forming on his cheek, Pete slumped in the mud with a dazed look and blood drying on his jacket, Andy sitting, cut and bleeding and unconscious- and for a brief moment, bitterly hoped that it was the former.

* * *

Joe was just barely managing to not cry out from the pain twisting in his leg. It flooded the entire right side of his body, reaching his spine. All he wanted to do was escape the claustrophobic tightness of the rental car, with its crushed walls and shattered glass. He felt it keeping him locked inside, unable to move efficiently or to keep his knee in a position where it wasn't agonizingly painful.

He was trying to maintain a mental wall between himself and his leg. It was on another plane of existence, away from the rest of him. Keep the pain at bay, keep it outside. There were more important things that he needed to think about, anyway. Like the others.

Looking at Andy for longer than a second made Joe want to scream. He averted his eyes as best he could, wishing that he could help as Patrick and Pete struggled to drag him out of the driver's seat and trying hard to ignore the images that were popping up in his head. Images of an Andy covered in blood, of an Andy with glass in his hair, of an Andy dead on a slab-

He let out one sob at Patrick's affirmation that their friend was alive, and then wouldn't allow for another one to escape. Keep your head, dude, keep your head. Fucking keep your head _oh god that fucking hurt-_

Andy was alive. Okay, okay. That was step one. He'd be fine. Now, what the fuck was step two?

Right. 911. Right. He could do that. Fuck yeah he could do that.

Joe scrambled for a moment, feeling his jacket and back pockets, grimacing even at the slight movement. He eventually landed on the correct pocket and took out his phone, shakily unlocking it and dialing 9-1-1.

He had had to do this once before, he thought distantly. He didn't remember being this shaky the last time.

A voice picked up almost immediately.

"911, where is your emergency?"

"Hi, um," Joe paused, trying to get the gravel out of his voice. "We were in an accident. I thi- I think we need an ambulance."

"Where are you sir? Do you have an address?"

Joe paused. Shit. He didn't know where they were. Andy was the one navigating. He didn't even know what fucking road they were on.

"Sir? Sir, are you there? Do you know where you are?"

"Uh, uh wait, just hold on," Joe stuttered into the phone. He half-covered it with one hand and blinked twice, clearing his head. He turned to Patrick.

"Guys, where are we? They need to know location, street."

Patrick leaned back from where he was putting pressure on Andy's cuts. He was breathing heavily, wide-eyed, glasses gone, looking like he was frightened of Joe's words.

"Do you know where we are?" Joe repeated, more urgently.

"…No, shit, I don't."

Mind going at a million miles per second, Joe quickly craned his neck around, trying to peer through the cracked glass of the rear windshield and the gloom beyond it.

"Can- Patrick, can you check the road?"

"What, like climb the hill? It's all mud, I-I can't climb-"

"Just _try_ , okay?" Joe persisted, frantic at this point. We wiped his face. "Just try to see a, a landmark or something, okay? Like a sign or store or- I dunno, a rest stop! Literally anything, come on 'Trick."

Patrick shakily nodded and turned to say something to Pete, who was helping apply pressure to Andy. Pete nodded, eyes wide. As he stepped forward, Patrick struggled to begin climbing the short incline, passing Joe's open door with a determined glare.

Joe stared at the blood coating his friend's hands, and the nasty gash in Patrick's forehead. He let out a string of swears under his breath as Patrick left his sight. The last thing that Joe wanted to do right now was send Patrick up there with his head cracked open. Especially when Andy was-

"Sir? _Sir,_ are you alright?"

The small voice from the phone against Joe's chest brought him back out of his thoughts. He startled and swallowed quickly. "Yes! Yes, yes I'm here. W-we're finding a landmark, we don't know where we are, I'm sorry, my friend went to go look."

The woman rushed to respond. "Are there any injuries in your vehicle?"

"Yes, yeah we all… My friend is unconscious, h-he's bleeding a ton. The rest of us are injured too, but we're just trying to get our bearings."

"How many of you were in the vehicle?"

"Four. Andy- the driver is barely breathing, please, he really needs an ambulance, right now."

"There will be one on the way soon. Did you hit another vehicle, or was your vehicle the only one involved?"

"We were hit." Joe grit his teeth.

"Did the other vehicle crash with you?"

Joe thought a moment, gritting his teeth at another crackle of pain. He quickly surveyed the area directly outside his windows and the small patches of ground visible in in the dim streetlight. "No, I… I don't know, I don't think so."

"That's alright sir. Did your-"

The woman's tinny voice was drowned out as a hand wrapped around the car door and Patrick's face appeared, red and squinting. Joe jumped at the sudden appearance and involuntarily jerked the phone away from his ear.

"There's a… a 7-eleven roadstop… sign," he breathed heavily for a moment, letting some of the color leave his face. He wiped a muddy hand idly on his jeans. Joe attempted to reach out to support him for a moment but couldn't quite stretch, so he let his hand close around the door handle. "It's like… half a mile down… the road. I think there was an interstate sign for… A1A?"

Joe tried to smile at Patrick and repeated this information to the woman. Then he repeated it again, to make sure that she had heard it. To make sure she could find them. And soon.

The woman began asking him several more questions, but Joe didn't really pay attention to how his own voice answered them. He focused on calming his ragged breathing instead, concentrating on the in-and-out of oxygen and attempting to force it to go slower. The ever-present pain of his knee made it hard for him to continue answering the woman, but somehow he managed it, although later on he would not be able to remember exactly what he told her.


End file.
